Читать книгу The Dark Side of the Island - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 9

Chapter 3

Two Candles for St Katherine

The lights in the little church were very dim and down by the altar the candles flickered and St Katherine seemed to float out of the darkness bathed in a soft white light.

The smell of incense was overpowering and for a moment he felt a little giddy. It was a long time since he had been in a church and he stretched out a hand and touched the cold roughness of a pillar in the darkness to bring himself back to reality and moved down the aisle.

Father John Mikali knelt in prayer by the altar. His pure, almost childlike face was raised to heaven and in the candlelight the beard gleamed like silver against his dark robes.

Lomax sat on one of the wooden benches and waited and after a while the old priest crossed himself and got to his feet. When he turned and saw Lomax he showed no visible emotion.

Lomax got to his feet slowly. ‘A long time, Father.’

‘I was told you were here,’ Father John said.

Lomax shrugged. ‘News travels fast in a small town.’

The old priest nodded. ‘Especially bad news.’

‘You too?’ Lomax said bitterly. ‘Now I know I’m in trouble.’

‘It is not for me to judge you,’ Father John said, ‘but it was foolish of you to return. Once the grass has grown over a grave it is not good to disturb it.’

‘All I want are the answers to a few questions,’ Lomax said. ‘If you of all people won’t help me, who will?’

Father John sat down on one of the benches. ‘First, let me ask you a question. Why have you returned to Kyros after all this time?’

Lomax shrugged. ‘An impulse, I suppose.’

But there was more to it than that – much more. He squeezed his hands together and frowned, trying to get it straight in his own mind.

After a while he said slowly, ‘I think I came here looking for something.’

‘It would interest me to know what,’ the old man said.

Lomax shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure. Myself, perhaps. The man I lost back there in the past so many years ago.’

‘And you thought to find him here on Kyros?’

‘But this was where he existed, Father. Don’t you see that? During the past two or three years a strange thing’s been happening to me. The events that other man was involved in here in these islands so many years ago seem more real to me than those things which have happened since. More important in every way. Does that make any kind of sense?’

The old priest sighed. ‘Captain Lomax, for these people that man has been dead for seventeen years. It would have been better if you had not resurrected him.’

‘All right, Father,’ Lomax said. ‘Let’s get down to hard facts. The last view I had of Kyros was from the deck of the E-boat which was taking me to Crete after the Germans had captured me. What happened after I left?’

‘Everyone who helped you was arrested,’ Father John said. ‘Including their immediate relatives. Some were shot in the main square as an example, the rest were sent to a concentration camp in Greece. Few survived the ill-treatment.’

‘And the people think I was responsible? That I betrayed them?’

‘You were the logical person and the fact that the Germans failed to execute you seemed to prove it. After all, they usually shot any British officer they caught who’d been working in the mountains with the Resistance.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Lomax said.

‘You were badly wounded, perhaps even a little delirious. How can you be sure? In such a state, a man does strange things.’

‘Not a chance,’ Lomax said stubbornly. ‘I didn’t talk, Father. Believe me.’

The old man sighed. ‘It’s painful to have to tell you this, but I can see that I must. Colonel Steiner made no secret of the fact that he had persuaded you to give him the information he needed in exchange for your life.’

Lomax felt as if a cold wind had passed over his face. ‘But that isn’t true,’ he said. ‘It can’t be. I didn’t tell Steiner a damn thing.’

‘Then who did, Captain Lomax? There was no one else. They were very thorough, you know. They even included me.’

Lomax looked at him incredulously. ‘They arrested you?’

Father John smiled gently. ‘Oh, yes. I too sampled the delights of their concentration camp at Fonchi.’

Lomax buried his face in his hands. ‘This thing’s beginning to seem like a waking nightmare. Did you know that Alexias Pavlo actually tried to kill me a little while back?’

Pain flashed across the old man’s face. ‘So it has started already? And violence breeds violence. This was what I was afraid of.’

Lomax got up and paced nervously across the aisle. For a moment he stood there staring into space, a slight frown on his face, and then he turned quickly.

‘If I’d really been guilty of this terrible thing do you think I’d have dared show my face here again, even after seventeen years? I know these islands and their people. I spent four years in the mountains with them. They believe in an eye for an eye and they’ve the longest memories in the world.’

‘A good point,’ Father John said, ‘but it could be argued that the situation here has taken you by surprise. That you were not aware of what took place as a consequence of your action.’

Lomax stood looking at him feeling curiously helpless and then weariness flooded through him in a great wave.

He slumped down, his shoulders bowed in defeat. ‘For God’s sake, what’s the use?’

The old priest stood up. ‘Believe me, my son, I harbour no resentment against you, but I fear the evil that your presence here may produce. I think it would be better for all of us if you left on the steamer that brought you here. You still have time.’

Lomax nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

Father John murmured a blessing. ‘I must go now. My presence in the streets may help to prevent any expression of violence when you leave.’

He moved away along the aisle and Lomax stayed there on the bench, his head in his hands. He was past caring, his mind numb, gripped by a force he seemed unable to cope with. All the strength was draining out of him and he leaned forward and rested his head against a pillar.

Someone ran in through the entrance of the church and paused and then steps sounded on the stone flags of the aisle.

It was the perfume he first became aware of, strange and somehow alien in that place, like lilac fresh after rain, and it tingled in his nostrils bringing his head up sharply.

A young girl was standing there in the half-darkness, a scarf covering her head peasant-fashion. She was breathing heavily as if she had run a long way and she stood there staring down at him and no word was spoken.

His mouth went dry and something that was almost fear moved inside him because this thing was not possible.

‘Katina!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Little Katina Pavlo.’

She moved closer, a hand reaching out to touch his cheek and her face became that of a beautiful, mature woman in her middle thirties. In the candlelight it seemed to glow, to become alive.

‘The Germans told us you were dead,’ she said. ‘That the boat in which they sent you to Crete was sunk.’

He nodded. ‘It was, but I was picked up.’

She sat down beside him, so close that he could feel the warmth of her thigh through her linen dress. ‘I was in one of the shops buying supplies when I heard you had come in on the steamer from Athens. I couldn’t believe it. I ran all the way.’

Her forehead was damp with perspiration and he took out his handkerchief and dried it gently. ‘It’s not good to run in this hot sun.’

She smiled faintly. ‘Seventeen years and still you treat me like a child.’

‘A moment ago I thought you still were. You made the heart move inside me, but it was only a trick of the candlelight.’

‘Have I changed so little, then?’

‘Only to grow more beautiful.’

Her nostrils flared and something glowed in the dark eyes. ‘I think you were always the most gallant man I ever knew.’

For a moment time seemed to have no meaning, the present and the past merging into one. In some strange way it was as if they had sat here in the candlelight of the little church before, as if everything that happened was a circle turning endlessly upon itself.

He took her hand gently and said, ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Sergeant Kytros told me.’ She hesitated. ‘I heard what happened at The Little Ship. You must forgive my uncle. Sometimes I think he is no longer in his right mind. He has lived with great pain for so many years.’

‘And he blames it all on me?’

She nodded gravely. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Along with everyone else around here, including Father John. Why should you be any different?’

‘Because I know you sacrificed yourself for these people,’ she said calmly.

He laughed and the sound of it was harsh and ugly. ‘You try telling that one to Alexias and his pals and see how far it gets you.’

‘I did,’ she said. ‘A long time ago, but only one person would believe me.’

He frowned. ‘Who was that?’

‘Oliver Van Horn.’

‘They told me in Athens that he’d stayed on here after the war. I’d hoped to visit him. Does he still live in the villa out on the point?’

‘I keep house for him.’

His eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘You never married?’

She shook her head. ‘Never.’

‘He must be in his sixties now,’ Lomax said slowly.

The right-hand corner of her mouth twitched slightly and there was amusement in her eyes. ‘We have no arrangement, if that is what’s worrying you.’

‘None of my business,’ he said, but he smiled for the first time and she smiled back. ‘How do the locals treat him these days? After all, he’s English enough in all conscience.’

‘Not to the islanders. He suffered as much as anyone. He was taken with the rest of us.’

Lomax frowned, a thought suddenly occurring to him for the first time. ‘And you, Katina? What happened to you?’

She shrugged. ‘They took me away with the others.’

‘To the concentration camp at Fonchi?’

She shook her head. ‘No, to another one, but they were all the same.’ She leaned forward and touched his face. ‘You look older. Too much older. I think you have been very unhappy.’

He shrugged. ‘Seventeen years is a long time.’

‘Are you married?’

He hesitated briefly and then plunged straight in and it was surprising how easy it was now, almost as if he was talking about some distant relative or a casual friend who wasn’t really important.

‘I had a wife and a little girl. They were both killed in an automobile accident in Pasadena five years ago.’

Her sigh echoed away into the darkness. ‘I knew there was something, but I wasn’t sure. It still shows in the eyes.’ She took his hands and held them firmly. ‘Tell me now. Why have you come back to this place?’

‘When Father John asked me, I told him I was looking for my other self,’ he said. ‘The one who existed here in these islands so many years ago, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘There is a deeper reason,’ she said. ‘Am I not right?’

‘Who knows?’ he shrugged. ‘Van Horn once told me that life was action and passion. If that’s true, there’s been precious little of either in mine for quite some time. Perhaps I thought I could recapture something.’

‘And what are you going to do now? Leave on the boat?’

‘That’s what they all seem to want me to do. Alexias told Kytros he wouldn’t be responsible for what might happen if I stayed.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘You would seem to have twenty minutes in which to make up your mind.’

‘What would you like to see me do?’

She shrugged. ‘It isn’t my decision to make. It can only be your own.’

She started to get to her feet and he held her hand and frowned, because he knew that for some strange reason this was the pivot on which the whole thing would turn.

‘Do you want me to stay?’

‘It would take courage,’ she said. ‘Very great courage.’

He smiled suddenly. ‘But I gave you my courage a long time ago, remember?’

She nodded, her face serious. ‘I remember.’

For a little while they sat there staring at each other and then she gently released his hand and stood up. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

He watched her go down to the altar and drop to one knee, then she stood up, selected two candles and placed them under the statue of St Katherine. It was only as she lit them with a taper that he realised who they were for and a lump came into his throat that threatened to choke him.

He got to his feet and walked blindly through the half-darkness to the door.